Lean Machine

Manufacturing Engineering, Nov 2005 by Waurzyniak, Patrick

Lean manufacturing improved Boeing's Apache Longbow helicopter factory processes, enabling the facility to win the Shingo Prize for Manufacturing

When the Boeing Co.'s (Chicago) Mesa, AZ, manufacturing facility began its transition to assembling the next-generation AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopter in 1998, the assembly operation's overall performance declined and cycle times increased.

Deploying lean concepts including high-performance workteams turned things around dramatically for the Boeing facility, which to date has delivered nearly 1500 Apache Longbow helicopters for the US Army and 10 international customers. Implementing lean techniques adopted by Boeing in the late 1990s allowed the Arizona helicopter manufacturer to reduce final assembly, integration, and test hours per aircraft by 85% over the past five years, Last March, the Mesa facility's performance helped win the prestigious Shingo Prize for Manufacturing awarded annually by the College of Business at Utah State University (Logan, UT).

"In 1998, we realized that performance was going down," says Jim Luby, manager, Quality and Lean Enterprise, at the Boeing facility in Mesa, while recalling the Mesa operation's transition to the next-generation Apache. "All the numbers, like cycle time, cost, were headed the wrong way. Every aircraft literally took longer than the last one, and you would think when you apply normal learning, that shouldn't be."

Reducing costs and eliminating waste, the Boeing plant initially installed a single lean pulsed production line to manufacture the Longbow helicopter. With its lean framework, the facility uses an enterprise value stream process that identifies the key processes associated with Apache production, managing how work is done. The system allows the flexibility to meet customer demand by providing necessary resources to mechanics at point of use, and working to standard repeatable processes that enable a single-piece flow.

At the 2-million ft^sup 2^ (186,000 m^sup 2^) manufacturing facility in Mesa, Boeing employs about 4500 people using the lean manufacturing techniques of the Boeing Production System, which integrates processes, people and tools into the manufacturing support systems. The Mesa facility is a component of Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems (IDS), a $30.5 billion business with more than 78,000 employees.

With approximately 64,000 ft^sup 2^ (5952 m^sup 2^) of manufacturing space devoted to Apache assembly, the Boeing helicopter team has shown dramatic improvements in manufacturing metrics since implementing lean in 1999, including on-time delivery of 100% and overall production hours per aircraft reduced more than 48%. The facility also reduced manufacturing cycle time more than 40% over the past six years since 1998.

Implementing lean also helped the Mesa site reduce the number of internal defects more than 58% since 2000 while the cost of internal defects (rework, repair and scrap) declined more than 61% in that timeframe. Lost workday case rate declined more than 58% since 2000 along with a 76% reduction in the lost workday rate over the past four years since 2000.

Since winning the Shingo Prize, the plant has added to its lean toolbox by revamping the pulsed line into a U-shaped lean assembly line that has further strengthened Boeing Mesa's production capabilities. "We have added to the lean process by putting the structural line in the same building with our assembly line," says Ed Koopman, general manager of the Mesa manufacturing site. "Rather than a straight pulsed moving line, it is now a U-shaped line where we do structural modification and assembly in the same building, and we've realized an additional 5 to 8% reduction in cycle time by doing that.

"We started looking at the next year, looking at making the next run at the prize," Koopman adds, "trying to get a little bit more emphasis on the lean process in our structural area, which is barebones airplane, green-airplane structure, as opposed to where it comes off the assembly line with all the rotor heads, tails, and guns. We've taken another step in trying to continue the process."

At the time Mesa introduced lean on the shop floor, several lean initiatives were being introduced throughout Boeing, including the early lean work at the Boeing IDS facility in Seattle where the company currently assembles key wing and fuselage assemblies for the next-generation F/A-22 Raptor jet fighter aircraft (see "Lean Fighter," in the March 2005 issue of Manufacturing Engineering.) A number of Mesa managers, including Luby and Janet Riley, Shingo Prize project leader, received training from the Boeing Lean Office, becoming Accelerated Improvement Workshop facilitators, and the facility also started used the Shingijutsu consultants from Japan that had been used previously by Boeing Commercial Aircraft (BCA).

"We obviously piggy-backed on that and we had three events over here in a year's time period," recalls Luby of working with Shingijutsu's lean consultants. "One of the key things with the Shingijutsu, and it's probably a cultural thing in that you didn't plan on executing weeks to months later, was their idea that This is what you ought to do, get going. You've got five minutes/ So you did it that week."